Artist: IAN GILLAN
Album: THE SINGLES + THE PROMO VIDEOS (11CD + DVD BOX SET)

Release date: 2007
Media type: CD

Following on from the comprehensive remastered set of albums issued by Edsel Records earlier this year, The Singles + The Promo Videos is a 12-disc box set comprising all 11 of Gillan’s singles from those albums, plus a DVD containing all seven promo videos.

The box covers the period from 1979 to 1982 which Gillan spent with Acrobat Records (who folded a week after the Mr Universe album was issued) and Virgin Records. The remasters series actually covered 1976 to 1982 as it also included the debut Ian Gillan Band album Child In Time and the 1978 live album Live At Budokan but strangely skipped Scarabus and Clear Air Turbulence, both released in 1977 and 1978’s Gillan. No singles were released from those albums though, so their absence doesn’t directly impact this set.

The singles themselves, while they are faithful replicas of the original 7? releases in cardboard sleeves featuring the original artwork, don’t contain any otherwise unavailable music. They would have done, had the remastered albums not already been issued, but those remasters each contain all of the b-sides from their respective singles (and other bonus tracks besides), so anyone who bought that collection already has all of these songs. The only two versions not available elsewhere are the single edits of No Easy Way and No Laughing In Heaven; the album versions being present on the new remasters.

But that’s not really the point of this release. This is a package for collectors and fans, and at the budget price it’s being released at, no Gillan/Deep Purple fan is going to argue. As far as collectors are concerned, aside from this being an excellent addition to their endless collection, the best thing about this release is the DVD. The promo videos Gillan made for seven of their singles have never been commercially released, only shown on TV a few times. Thankfully they didn’t make one for the appalling Vengeance, a track which sounds entirely separate from the rest of its parent album, Mr Universe.

Only including singles from Gillan, not from the Ian Gillan Band, means this is a box set of hard rock. With the Ian Gillan Band he flirted with other styles, but it was with Gillan that he returned to his bluesy hard rock background and, aside from Vengeance and the messy No Laughing In Heaven, produced probably the best Deep Purple-related body of work of any of the other members, second only perhaps to three or four of Ritchie Blackmore’s albums with strong>Rainbow.

This set is a must for Gillan fans. Any who bought the remastered albums needs this to complete the collection, and any who didn’t may well need these b-sides. Some of them surfaced several times on the budget releases from Angel Air Records, but never on official Gillan releases.

TRACKLIST:

CD 1:

Vengeance
Smoke On The Water (Live At Kingsway Recorders)

CD 2:

Sleeping On The Job
Higher And Higher

CD 3:

No Easy Way (Single Edit)
Handles On Her Hips
I might As Well Go Home (Mystic)

CD 4:

Trouble
Your Sister’s On My List
Mr Universe (Live)
Vengeance (Live)
Smoke On The Water (Live)

CD 5:

Mutually Assured Destruction
The Maelstrom

CD 6:

New Orleans
Take A Hold of Yourself

CD 7:

No Laughing In Heaven (Single Edit)
One For The Road
Lucille
Bad News

CD 8:

Nightmare
Bite The Bullet (Live)

CD 9:

Restless
On The Rocks (Live)

CD 10:

Living For The City
Breaking The Chains
Purple Sky

CD 11:

Long Gone
Fiji


DVD:
The Promo Videos

Sleeping On The Job
No Laughing In Heaven
Lucille
Nightmare
Restless
Living For The City
Long Gone